Lib Dems claim Salmond planning budget ‘blame game’

lex Salmond will not make a real attempt to get his budget passed this year, preferring instead to indulge in a “blame game” ahead of next year’s Holyrood elections, Tavish Scott, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader warned today.
Mr Scott launched his attack on the First Minister ahead of key cross-party budget talks at Holyrood.
John Swinney, [...]

Sketch: Canape, won’t pay

aving unavoidably missed a few weeks of First Minister’s Questions, I managed to tune in to the final session and, as I saw the familiar coupons – Whitton, McNeil, Eadie, Curran – behind Elmer Fudd variously emoting bile or vacuity, my own face fell, and clouds of gloom threatened my sunny spirits.
I don’t know what [...]

What more powers for the Scottish Parliament might look like

While so much attention was focused on the extraordinary rise of Danny Alexander over the weekend (from Cairngorms National Park press office to Chief Secretary to the Treasury in two easy steps), an important change for Scotland happened, almost unnoticed.
As Mr Alexander was moved up Whitehall to the Treasury, his fellow Lib Dem MP Michael [...]

Sketch: Llama mince and retold porkies

rollies up, ladies and gents, as we prepare to be sprayed with more immature ordure in the baby of parliaments, the numpty nursery, the kindergarten of cack. Actually, I do a disservice to many MSPs with these childish ascriptions. But, speaking personally, I can’t wait for the summer holidays. The toll of hearing retold porkies, [...]

Sketch: Scotland, always knowingly undersold

elcome to the new surreal realities. A Tory Westminster government, with its Lib Dem partners, is considering giving Scotland back £180 million of her own money that the previous Labour administration had kept locked up in a bank vault.
And, as that curiously interesting coalition government struggles to hold together the British arc of prosperity with [...]

Sketch: Shame, embarrassment and business as usual

ack to First Minister’s Queries at Holyrood and, boy, it was depressing. Whatever you think of the Rose Garden press conference at Downing Street – two public schoolboys twittering in front of a birds’ nesting box, just feet from a squirrel-proof feeder – it was charming and lovely. And whatever you think of Clegg and [...]

Sketch: Except for viewers in Scotland…

ore news from St Elsewhere as, once again, Holyrood became a haven from politics. Politics, you will understand, is something that now happens on television. That’s where we hear the debates (Unionist v Unionist v Unionist), witness the gaffes and – based on choice of tie and cut of jib – decide which leader looks [...]

Labour complains about SNP’s spoof poster as campaign turns nasty

cottish Labour have reported the SNP to the Electoral Commission after the Nationalists published a poster mimicking Labour’s manifesto front cover – which included the official Labour logo.
Labour’s manifesto had a stylised picture on the front of a family watching the sun rise over fields and the slogan: “A Future Fair for All.”
As part of [...]

Sketch: Carbon emissions a smokescreen for the main political event

Once more, there was a feeling that real life was elsewhere as the Scottish Parliament went through the motions at First Minister’s Questions.
As is traditional, the first motion was produced by opposition Labour leader Iain Gray, known to the masses as Elmer Fudd. He focused on carbon emissions and, in a surprise development, thought the [...]

Sketch: lava actually

t last, it was time for the big televised debate between the main party leaders.
That’s right. First Minister’s Questions.
After an Easter break, the weekly roister-doistering got off to its usual formulaic start with Labour leader Elmer Fudd, born Iain John Bull Gray, asking First Minister Eck Salmond, born Dolores Braveheart Blenkinsop, about his engagements for [...]

Scottish Parliament sketch: Comfortably numpty

he words “numpty” and “sap” were bandied around the Scottish Parliament today. It’s what you’d expect really, certainly if our politicians truly are representative of what most objective observers agree is a timorous, dimwitted nation.
The homely insults were hurled during First Minister’s Queries, much of which was taken up with the Budget announced in that [...]

Sketch: clowns, crowns and cloth caps

nother First Minister’s Questions, the half-hour of bad-tempered badinage that tests the mettle of our leaders and the patience of the punters. Sometimes, to be quite honest with you for once, I have to go gird my loins to go in. It’s not the show itself that’s so bad. It’s the putting on of the [...]

Sketch: Swedes to the sweet

ories usually look on Sweden with an expression of horror. Intelligent, progressive and humane, the Nordic nation stands for everything they detest. At least, that’s situation normal. However, abnormal developments are afoot, as the Swedes start to lose the plot and tinker with their “too good to be true” state.
This has attracted the attention of [...]

Sketch: The whole tooth and nothing but

As citizens will have noticed, the weekly hullabaloo at Holyrood is called First Minister’s Questions. It’s not First Minister’s Answers, which is just as well, given today’s shenanigans.
Of course, all politicians are trained not to answer the question. On television, in particular, they listen carefully to it, then talk about something else entirely. Pushed by [...]

Scott sets Lib Dems election target of quarter of Scottish seats

avish Scott, the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, has set his party the ambitious target of winning more than a quarter of all the seats in Scotland in this year’s General Election.
In an interview with The Caledonian Mercury on the eve of his party’s Scottish conference, Mr Scott said he believed his party [...]

Sketch: To be or not to be or not to mention the ‘I’ word at all

Good old Holyrood. Just when you think you’re in for a dull time, matters always liven up. Put another way: thank goodness for Annabel Goldie.
And thank goodness somebody mentioned independence.
I’m not saying that knife crime – the subject that opened First Minister’s Questions – is dull. Far from it, obviously. It’s just that [...]

Sketch: Nicola faces enemies at the gate

Well, at least Lunchgate was off the menu, even if we had to put up with a meal being made of the Deputy First Minister writing in support of a fraudster. One Gate closes and another Gate opens.
Fraudgate, or whatever it is, involved Nicola Sturgeon writing a letter on behalf of a constituent recently found [...]

Sketch: Aggravated burgery steals the show

urgers and milk came up – as it were – during this week’s instalment of First Minister’s Questions in Parliament. All of which appetite-spoiling fare was apposite following revelations that citizens were paying nine grand a time to sit and have dinner with the First Minister, Alex Salmond.
Presumably, there was more than burgers and milk [...]

Sketch: Bakunin, where art thou?

Question: is oppositional politics a constructive or destructive thing? In particular, is First Minister’s Questions, highlight of the oppositional week, the best way to do things? The sad answer is: probably. And yet rammies like today’s just seem so, well, 17th century somehow. Delving even further back, you could imagine neanderthal moots that were more [...]

Sketch: A nose by any other name

The last thing you expect at First Minister’s Questions is to be offered a “bouquet of absurdity”. A panoply perhaps. But a bouquet? We smelled a rat.
It was Labour leader Elmer Fudd who introduced a pong into the chamber when he raised a question about – wait for it – “the security of the Queen [...]

Sketch: King Cnut’s tootsies trip up Annabel

There was controversy over the tootsies of King Cnut in the Scottish Parliament yesterday. But that wasn’t the oddest thing. The oddest thing was the consensus.
True, the subject under advisement was the need to tackle illiteracy. But, even so, the hardliners on the Labour and SNP benches usually couldn’t attend a church social without attempting [...]

Sketch: Eck’s true grit and Annabel’s hash

Oh, glorious new year! Twa thoosand and ten, ken? A new decade even. What an exciting time for Scottish democracy. Who knows where we will be ten years’ hence? All right, probably not very far, but join in here and help me build the mood.
Oh yes, so exciting. And the MSPs were back from their [...]